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The Book of Jonah (Hebrew: Sefer Yonah)
is a book in the Hebrew Bible.
It tells
the story of an Hebrew prophet named Jonah ben
Amittai who is sent by God to prophesy the destruction of Nineveh but tries to
escape the divine mission. Set in the reign of Jeroboam II (786-746 BCE), it was probably
written in the post-exilic period (after 530 BCE). The story has an
interesting interpretive history (see below) and has become
well-known through popular children’s stories. In Judaism it is the Haftarah
for the afternoon of Yom Kippur due to
its story of God's willingness to forgive those who repent.

Outline of book

The Book of Jonah is primarily a story about the character of God,
even His compassion. As such, it can be divided
into four sections,roughly divided by each chapter: (1) God's
sovereignty, (2) God’s deliverance, (3) God's mercy, and (4) God's
righteousness. It may also be outlined in the following
manner:

God's first commission and Jonah’s rebellion

God's deliverance toward Jonah and Jonah’s prayer of
thanksgiving

God's second commission and Jonah’s obedience

God's deliverance toward Nineveh and Jonah’s complaint of
ingratitude

In the first half of the book, God's deliverance is demonstrated
through His sovereignty. In the second half, God's deliverance is
demonstrated through His mercy. Finally, God declares His
righteousness in choosing to force and choosing to repent.

Narrative

As mentioned above, the book of Jonah is not written like the other
books of the prophets. Jonah is almost entirely narrative with the
exception of the psalm in chapter 2. The actual prophetic word
against Nineveh is only given in passing through the narrative. As
with any good narrative, the story of Jonah has a setting,
characters, a plot, and themes. It also relies heavily on such
literary devices as irony.

Setting

The story of Jonah is set against the background of Ancient Israel
in the 8th-7th centuries BCE but deals with the religious and
social issues of the late 6th-4th centuries BCE, coinciding with
the views of latter chapters of the book
of Isaiah (Third Isaiah), where Israel is given a prominent
place in the expansion of God's kingdom to the Gentiles.

The Jonah mentioned in II Kings 14:25 lived during the reign of
Jeroboam II (786-746 BCE) and was from the city of Gath-hepher.
This city,
modern el-Meshed, located only several miles from Nazareth in what
would have been known as Israel in the
post-exilic period (as distinct from the southern kingdom, known as
Judah) and Galilee around the time of Christ.

Nineveh was the
capital of the ancient Assyrian empire,
which fell to the Medes in 612 BCE. The book itself calls Nineveh a
“great city,” probably referring to its affluence, but perhaps to
its size as well. (That the story assumes the city’s existence
and deliverance from judgment may indeed reflect an older tradition
dating back to the eighth-7th century BCE.) Assyria often opposed
Israel and eventually took the Israelites captive in 722-721 BCE
(see History of ancient Israel and
Judah). The Assyrian oppression against the
Israelites can be seen in the bitter prophecies of Nahum.

Characters

The story of Jonah is a drama between a passive man and an active
God. Jonah, whose name literally means "dove,"
is introduced to the reader in the very first verse. The name is
decisive. While most prophets had heroic names (e.g., Isaiah means
"God has saved"), Jonah's name carries with it an element of
passivity.

Jonah's passive character then is contrasted with the other main
character: God (lit. "I will be what I will
be"). God's character is altogether active. While Jonah flees, God
pursues. While Jonah falls, God lifts up. The character of God in
the story is progressively revealed through the use of irony. In
the first part of the book, God is depicted as relentless and
wrathful; in the second part of the book, He is revealed to be
truly loving and merciful.

The other characters of the story include the sailors in chapter 1
and the people of Nineveh in chapter 3. These characters are also
contrasted to Jonah's passivity. While Jonah sleeps in the hull,
the sailors pray and try to save the ship from the storm (1:4-6).
While Jonah passively finds himself forced to act under the Divine
Will, the people of Nineveh actively petition God to change His
mind.

Plot

The plot centers on a conflict between Jonah and God. God calls
Jonah to proclaim judgment to Nineveh, but Jonah resists and
attempts to flee. He goes to Joppa and boards a
ship bound for Tarshish. God calls
up a great storm at sea, and the ship's crew cast Jonah overboard
in an attempt to appease God. A great sea creature (the Book of
Jonah says it is a fish but the New
Testament reference in Matthew and
retellings for children conventionally assume it to be a whale)
sent by God, swallows Jonah. For three days and three nights Jonah
languishes inside the fish's belly. He says a prayer in which he
repents for his disobedience and calls upon God for mercy. God
speaks to the fish, which vomits out Jonah safely on dry land.
After his rescue, Jonah obeys the call to prophesy against Nineveh,
and they repent and God forgives them. Ironically, the relentless
God demonstrated in the first chapter becomes the merciful God in
the last two chapters (see 3:10). In a parallel turnabout, Jonah
becomes one of the most effective of all prophets, turning the
entire population of Nineveh (about 120,000 people) to God.

Interpretive history

As with many canonical books, the Book of Jonah has had a long and
varied interpretive history This history spans from ancient
rabbinic interpretations to "post modern" reader-response interpretations. The
interpretative styles of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and atheists
have all been employed to understand the Book of Jonah.

Early Jewish interpretation

The story of Jonah has numerous theological implications, and this
has long been recognized. In early translations of the Hebrew
Bible, Jewish translators tended to remove anthropomorphic imagery
in order to prevent the reader from misunderstanding the ancient
texts. This tendency is evidenced in both the Aramaic translations
(i.e. the Targum) and the Greek translations
(i.e. the Septuagint). As far as the Book
of Jonah is concerned, Targum Jonah offers a good example of
this.

Targum Jonah

In Jonah 1:6, the Masoretic Text (MT)
reads, "...perhaps God will pay heed to us...." Targum Jonah
translates this passage as: "...perhaps there will be mercy from
the Lord upon us...." The captain's proposal is no longer an
attempt to change the divine will; it is an attempt to appeal to
divine mercy. Furthermore, in Jonah 3:9, the MT reads, "Who knows,
God may turn and relent [lit. repent]?" Targum Jonah translates
this as, "Whoever knows that there are sins on his conscience let
him repent of them and we will be pitied before the Lord." God does
not change His mind; He shows pity.

Dead Sea Scrolls

Fragments of the book were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), most of which
followed the Masoretic Text closely
and with Mur XII reproducing a large portion of the text . As for
the non-canonical writings, the majority of references to biblical
texts were made by argumentum ad verecundiam. The Book of
Jonah appears to have served less purpose in the Qumran community
than other texts, as the writings make no references to it.

Early Christian interpretation

New Testament

The earliest Christian interpretations of Jonah are found in the
Gospel of Matthew (see and 16:1-4)
and the Gospel of Luke (see Luke
11:29-32). Both Matthew and Luke record a tradition of Jesus’
interpretation of the story of Jonah (notably, Matthew includes two
very similar traditions in chapters 12 and 16). As with most Old
Testament interpretations found in the New Testament, Jesus’
interpretation is primarily “typological” (see Typology ). Jonah becomes a “type” for
Jesus. Jonah spent three days in the belly of the fish; Jesus will
spend three days in the ground. Here, Jesus plays on the imagery of
Sheol found in Jonah’s prayer. While Jonah
metaphorically declared, “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried,” Jesus
will literally be in the belly of Sheol. And Finally, Jesus
compares his generation to the people of Nineveh. Jesus fulfills
his role as a type of Jonah, however his generation fails to
fulfill its role as a type of Nineveh. Nineveh repented but his
generation, which has seen and heard one even greater than Jonah,
fails to repent. Through his typological interpretation of the
story of Jonah, Jesus has weighed his generation and found it
wanting.

Augustine of Hippo

The debate over the credibility of the miracle of Jonah is not
simply a modern one. The credibility of a human being surviving in
the belly of a great fish has long been questioned. In c. 409 CE,
Augustine of Hippo wrote to
Deogratias concerning the challenge of some to the miracle recorded
in the Book of Jonah. He writes:

Augustine responds that if one is to question one miracle, then one
should question all miracles as well (section 31). Nevertheless,
despite his apologetic, Augustine views the story of Jonah as a
figure for Christ. For example, he writes: "As, therefore, Jonah
passed from the ship to the belly of the whale, so Christ passed from the cross to the
sepulchre, or into the abyss of death. And as Jonah suffered this
for the sake of those who were endangered by the storm, so Christ
suffered for the sake of those who are tossed on the waves of this
world." Augustine credits his allegorical interpretation to the
interpretation of Christ himself (Matt. 12:39,40), and he allows
for other interpretations as long as they are in line with
Christ's.

Islamic interpretation

Modern interpretation

In Jonah (1:17 in English translation), the Hebrew text reads
dag gadol (Hebrew: דג גדול), which translated literally
means "great fish." The Septuagint
translates this phrase into Greek as ketos megas (Greek:
κητος μεγας). The term ketos alone means "huge fish," and
in Greek mythology the term was closely associated with sea
monsters. Jerome later translated this phrase as piscis
granda in his Latin Vulgate.
However, he translated ketos as cetus in .

At some point, cetus became synonymous with whale (c.f. cetyl alcohol, which is alcohol derived
from whales). In his 1534 translation, William Tyndale translated the phrase in
Jonah 2:1 as "greate fyshe," and he translated the word
ketos (Greek) or cetus (Latin) in as "whale." Tyndale's translation was, of course, later
incorporated into the Authorized
Version of 1611. Since, the "great fish" in Jonah 2 has been
most often interpreted as a whale.

In the line 3:1, the book refers to the fish as Dag Gadol, meaning
"great fish", in the masculine. However, in the 3:2, it says
"ha'daga" meaning female fish (the ha at the beginning means the).
Given the rest of these selected verses "And the lord provided a
great fish (dag gadol) for Jonah, and it swallowed him, and Jonah
sat in the belly of the fish (still male) for three days and
nights.) Then, from the belly of the (female) fish, Jonah began to
pray." It has been interpreted that this means Jonah was
comfortable in the roomy male fish, so he didn't pray. However,
then, God transferred him to a smaller, female fish, in which Jonah
was uncomfortable, so he prayed.

Historical and literary criticism

Some biblical scholars believe Jonah's prayer ( ) to be a later
addition to the story (see source
criticism for more information on how such conclusions are
drawn). Despite questions of its source, the prayer carries out an
important function in the narrative as a whole.

The prayer is a psalm of thanksgiving. The presence of the prayer
serves to interpret the swallowing of the fish to be God's
salvation. God has lifted Jonah out of Sheol and set him on the
path to carry out His will. The story of descent (from Israel, to
Tarshish, to the sea, to under the sea) becomes the story of ascent
(from the belly of the fish, to land, to the city of
Nineveh).

Thus, the use of a psalm creates an important theological point. In
the popular understanding of Jonah, the fish is interpreted to be
the low point of the story. Yet even the fish is an instrument of
God's sovereignty and salvation.